Pc Setup - Chat Thread

[Madaz]

whats the bang for buck budget?

[SoFreshSoClean]

Which PC store is this from?

Also what is currently the best bang for buck video card for running current games @ 1900x1200 smoothly on high/max settings?

PC Case Gear

Great store

If you're in Perth though, hit up PLE because quite often their prices are almost identical to PCCG, but you dont have to worry about shipping. Sometimes they will knock a bit off the price, I think it depends on their mood half the time though hehe.

[Mayuri Krab]

whats the bang for buck budget?

$300 - $500 I guess.

ATM, I'm still running an old GTX 260+ on a tiny 19" 5:4 monitor.

PC Case Gear

Great store

If you're in Perth though, hit up PLE because quite often their prices are almost identical to PCCG, but you dont have to worry about shipping. Sometimes they will knock a bit off the price, I think it depends on their mood half the time though hehe.

Cheers.

EDIT: Just had a quick look, ATI 'high end' cards seems to be a lot cheaper compared to the Nvidia cards?

ATI 6970 is under $400 while the GTX 580 is ~$600? :S

Edited June 3, 2011 by Mayuri Krab

[jrm]

Gigabyte GTX 560 TI OC are decent cards for the $ (bang for buck)

Edit: Looks like your budgets higher than that though ..

[SoFreshSoClean]

$300 - $500 I guess.

ATM, I'm still running an old GTX 260+ on a tiny 19" 5:4 monitor.

Cheers.

EDIT: Just had a quick look, ATI 'high end' cards seems to be a lot cheaper compared to the Nvidia cards?

ATI 6970 is under $400 while the GTX 580 is ~$600? :S

Hot Tip: If you can get a reference ATI 6950, you can flash the BIOS and change it to a 6970, like I did. The cards are physically identical, just different BIOS.

[Madaz]

yeah ATi are cheaper atm

i have been looking at cards bit lower budget as i eventually want to crossfire again

still have all tabs open

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_877&products_id=17478

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_877&products_id=16298

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=193_877&products_id=16939

[Madaz]

Hot Tip: If you can get a reference ATI 6950, you can flash the BIOS and change it to a 6970, like I did. The cards are physically identical, just different BIOS.

close but not quite the 6850 has less stream processors

do the rest get unlocked with the new bios ?

[SoFreshSoClean]

close but not quite the 6850 has less stream processors

do the rest get unlocked with the new bios ?

Nah dude, read my post again, the 6950, not 6850

[Madaz]

ah sorry, guilty of the thing i hate most on forums

[Madaz]

having a look seems like i can get a HIS 6970 2gb for $333 @ MSY and PCCG is only a few dollars cheaper for the 6950 2gb

[R31Nismoid]

$300 AUD is generally the "sweet" spot for cost/performance.

So anything +/- $20 will do basically. Will run @ 1900x1200 effortlessly and for the next 12-18 months no drama.

[funkymonkey]

So I'm thinking of getting an Asus E35M1-M (AMD 350 Fusion) and 5 2TB SATA 5400RPM drives in a ZFS pool, chucking it all into a spare 1U rack with a picoPSU and 4gb of RAM, turning off the video and using it as a torrenting/avahi(bonjour)/fileserver running Ubuntu server.

Will it work?

[jrm]

ZFS on Linux!? ..

[funkymonkey]

You can compile it as part of Ubuntu's kernel. Problem?

[bozodos]

well why would you bother unless you're a fag who runs OSX at home? windows home server + full ATX case with CM drive bays is easier and cheaper tbh, or do you already have a rack installed at home?

[Converge]

woops, nvm.

Edited June 7, 2011 by Converge

[funkymonkey]

well why would you bother unless you're a fag who runs OSX at home? windows home server + full ATX case with CM drive bays is easier and cheaper tbh, or do you already have a rack installed at home?

I have a spare 1U rack and have:

iPhone 4

iPad 2

Onkyo reciever

HTPC/PVR (running XBMC and Windows Media Centre on Win7)

Dell Laptop that dual boots OSX and Win7

PC that dual boots OSX and Win7

Plus work provides me with some flavour of the month Android phone or tablet...

All of which will have to save/stream data off the server wirelessly or over gigabit LAN.

Running bonjour emulation for streaming to apple devices on ubuntu's piss easy. I need a central server to run GIT so I can use it as a repository for my code. I need OSX to make my Apple Apps. I need windows for my Android Apps and webapps and everything else.

Anyway, I was more hoping for some feedback on the hardware combo. Will the 350 Fusion cope with the load? Is it the best hardware setup for an intelligent NAS? Low power usage is also good as it runs 24/7. Or should I go with a sandy bridge mobo and an i3?

The mobo runs at 35W and supports 5 HDD's in SATA3, not that I'd ever max it out using 5400RPM or 7200RPM drives. I can either RAID5 em or ZFS it. ZFS is much more efficient. RAID5 is easier.

[bozodos]

run something with some more grunt and operate seperate VM's for your seperate tasks, there's a possibility

[funkymonkey]

run something with some more grunt and operate seperate VM's for your seperate tasks, there's a possibility

interesting idea. what kind of hardware would you use for this setup?

[bozodos]

something with plenty of cores and enough ram to feed everything, so think 16 gig + i7 2600k or something along those lines, I've only seen personal ones done in HyperV (though we use an ESX cluster at work, has lots of advantages over physical servers for *most* things). Disk would be another thing to consider, whether to go for a PERC / software RAID 5, SSD or 10k RPM SATA drives etc would depend on your needs; the great thing about VM's is how when they are unstable you simply reboot them without taking down everything else you have going on at the one time!

Pretty sure that if you use Virtual Box / VMWare you can use OSX as a guest OS too.